


Zounds!

by Rsbry_Beret



Category: Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist (TV)
Genre: And so does Tobin :), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, I read Shakespeare bc I’m queer, Look. I read sonnet 61 and I HAD to write it from pov of Tobin @ Leif, M/M, Poems, Poetry, Shakespeare, Tobin-centric, classic literature, just a little angst i promise, there was no other option I’m sorry, tobin likes poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26650192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rsbry_Beret/pseuds/Rsbry_Beret
Summary: Tobin memorized the entire dictionary by Highschool, and then he was running on air.AkaTobin loved poetry, because it was much easier to think using someone else’s words.
Relationships: Abigail & Tobin Batra, Leif Donnelly/Joan, Tobin Batra & Original Characters, Tobin Batra/Leif Donnelly
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	Zounds!

**Author's Note:**

> Rated T for language
> 
> No prior knowledge of pretentious literature necessary, but it is encouraged :)

Tobin memorized the entire dictionary by Highschool, and then he was running on air. 

He always needed something to do- that was why he learned how to code, why he was always studying and why he spent hours playing Better World. It was why he knew the dictionary cover to cover, why he joined the robotics club, then decathlon, then hacked the CIA and went to jail. 

Tobin always needed something to memorize. 

While Leif went through his emo phase, mcr and eyeliner and all, Tobin discovered Shakespeare.

Highschool English classes taught Shakespeare  _ wrong. _ Mr. Wilcox pretended that he was pretentious, the only playwright to ever be. 

Tobin read Romeo and Juliet in Freshman year, and kept a tally of every dick joke he found. His first read through, he found sixteen. His second, a lot more. 

It helped that he was a moody teenager when he started reading all his plays- they were all ridiculously theatrical, and none of the characters were afraid to feel things. Leif liked his music about being  _ not okay _ , and Tobin liked his monologues,  _ the summer’s flower is to the summer sweet, though to itself it only live and die. _ When he wasn’t able to express himself in his own words, he could use someone else’s. 

In Senior year, Tobin somehow got into AP English with Ms. Haner-call-me-Jamie, and almost flunked out. He stayed late after school everyday, talked and debated and acted out Twelfth Night with Jamie (some have greatness thrust upon ‘em!) and wrote extra credit essays every week, and passed with a C-minus. 

It was the best class he’d ever taken. 

-

Tobin had never been super in-tune with his emotions, in his opinion, but apparently he was better than most. He was always blasé about how he felt, to the point of concern at times, but Tobin had never understood people who hid from themselves. It was best to face things head on.

Which was why, when he finally figured out he was in love with Leif, he didn’t bother ignoring it. He told Leif how he felt, Leif rejected him, and they remained close friends. 

Sure, maybe Leif spent a few more nights than normal out at bars, meeting strangers in what might have been an excuse not to come home. And yes, Tobin would admit he memorized a few more sonnets than socially acceptable in the midst of his wallowing. But at least he didn’t bury that shit deep down, repress or whatever. If Shakespeare taught him literally one thing, it’s that ignoring your problems won’t make them go away. 

(And if, in his weaker moments, Tobin grabbed the sink and stared at his reflection and muttered to himself, “doubt thou the stars are fire; doubt that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt I love,” well, that was nobody’s business but his own.)

-

Tobin joined a book club when he was twenty one, and he refused to be embarrassed by it. 

He would go to the public library every Sunday afternoon and talk about whatever book they were reading that week. An hour and a half later, everyone moved on to a hippy art-showcase-slash-bar (who’s very existence still confused Tobin) and inevitably ended up arguing about Shakespeare. This was why he loved English majors- they never knew when to shut up, same as him. 

Kimmy hated all the tragedies with a fiery passion, Hank hated  _ everything  _ Shakespeare wrote bar none, Lane and Ulysses and Dani loved him as much as Tobin did, maybe more. Calypso seemed to sway either direction given the day, but she always had the best analyses. She was who Tobin called, when Leif hugged him and told him  _ I’m sorry, I just don’t feel that way about you,  _ and she had told him “cowards die many times before their deaths,” and it had helped, a little bit. 

Calypso slowly, glacially, opened up to Tobin after that, told him about the cute girl who worked at the grocery store who  _ wasn’t even that pretty, why do I like her so much, _ and Tobin had laughed and asked her if the check out girl had eyes nothing like the sun, and Calypso had punched his arm too hard and then beamed at him. 

With a name like hers, Tobin couldn’t really expect any other reaction. 

-

Tobin met Abigail and loved her immediately, in the way kindred spirits always do in plays. 

She told him that she preferred poets to playwrights, TS Eliot and Marge Piercy. They bonded over their mutual hatred of EE Cummings, and around them Tobin’s coworkers came and went, and the two of them signed for ages, talking of Michelangelo. 

Tobin invited her to his book club, and she politely declined, said she had too much on her plate at the time. He gave her his email and made her promise to share her opinions on sonnet 29. 

Two days later, he got an email with the subject line “somehow I feel like this is more about you than it is about me”, and a glorious opening line of “hey man, you alright? Because we’ve known each other for half a week and this seems pretty fucking heavy.”

Then she went on to say the entire sonnet really romanticized the concept of a relationship fixing your problems, platonic or otherwise, and he rebutted that the idea was more that friendship lessened the weight of hardship, and so they went on and on.

Abigail eventually told him she was aroace, and he happily responded that Rosaline survived the damn play. When Tobin, in turn, told her he was pan, she emailed back that this, at least, explained his obsession with Shakespeare. 

-

Just because Tobin had come to terms with the fact that Leif would never love him back in a romantic sense, it didn’t make it any easier. 

He sort of had expected to fall  _ out  _ of love with him, with the same slow casualness he had fallen  _ in _ love with him. 

He hadn’t. 

Tobin memorized more and more, frantically. Leif left for drinks, and Tobin grabbed the sink and looked at his reflection again,  _ my love is as a fever, _ and,  _ love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,  _ and all of sonnet 61, turning itself over in his head as he tried to sleep in an empty apartment, Leif on a ‘date’ with Joan that went past two am, still onward. 

_ Thy love, though much, is not so great. It is my love that keeps mine eye awake, _ and Tobin is staring at his ceiling with glow stars attached, he thought it would be fun and they  _ were, _ but now all he could do is trace shapes in them and get lost in his head.  _ Thou dost wake elsewhere, from me far off, with others far too near. _

Leif came home at five in the morning, hair mussed and smile large, cracking at the edges uncomfortably. They didn’t make eye contact, and Leif asked why Tobin was still awake, and Tobin told him how he couldn’t stop tracing shapes in his glow stars, and thought to himself,  _ the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves. _

-

Tobin always loved Romeo and Juliet. He disliked Romeo as a character, but everyone else was beyond interesting, and there were so many ways to look at it. 

Despite himself, he cast the characters. 

Leif as Romeo, idiotic and brave and too passionate. Joan as Juliet, analytical and clever but still soft when it counted and prone to mistakes having to do with love. 

Tobin wasn’t sure what that made him. 

Maybe Rosaline, quickly ignored by Romeo after he was distracted by someone new and shiny. Maybe the dramatic, asshole-ish, hurting Mercutio, or the contradictory Benvolio, always at odds with even himself. Maybe Tybalt, angry and dying and aware of it. Or maybe Paris, obtuse and entitled. 

Selfishly, Tobin hoped he was Benvolio, alive at the end. 

(Quietly, he suspected he was never a player at all.)

-

Then, Zoey’s dad died. 

Tobin didn’t say anything past a simple ‘I’m sorry,’ but in his desk drawer were a dozen abandoned notes, quotes and stolen poems. Tobin didn’t give her a single one at first- he knew that his coping method was unique. Most people didn’t want to hear about other people’s loss. Most people were able to think about their own in such a way that they didn’t need to. 

Then, on a whim, Tobin took a scrap of notebook paper out of his drawer and left it on Zoey’s desk before he left for lunch. When he got back, Zoey was at her desk, note in her hands. She read it and set it aside, then picked it up and read it again. Tobin watched her crumple it up into a ball, then smooth it out and refold it into a pocket in her laptop bag. 

He wasn’t sure if he should feel guilty or proud, so he felt both. 

-

Joan broke it off with Leif and he was miserable. Tobin had saved a million sonnets for this moment, about how he would survive this, because before he ever started holding a candle for Leif, they were best friends, and that didn’t stop just because he wanted something else. 

When Leif heard Tobin knock on his bedroom door, he called out “I’m not really in the mood for Shakespeare right now, Tobin,” voice cracking awfully, like his smile had the night he came back from Joan’s place and saw Tobin still awake, waiting for him. 

He hesitated, then replied, “Okay. I love you, man.”

Leif didn’t respond. 

Tobin’s mouth opened again, and no sound came out. He left Leif alone. 

-

In book club, they read Pride and Prejudice. Tobin read about Mr. Darcy and his awkward enamoredness, and Elizabeth Bennett’s very low opinion of him and his desperation. Even though they got together in the end, Tobin didn’t feel all that much better. 

-

Tobin emailed Abigail to ask what she thought of sonnet 139, and she emailed back “Tobin, I’m so sorry.”

She took it apart just the same,  _ O! Call not me to justify the wrong that thy unkindness lays upon my heart, _ wrote paragraphs about how it was written from a place of pain, a man broken-hearted because his partner loved other people, asked Tobin if he started dating someone or if this was about who she thought it was. 

Tobin didn’t reply for a week, then sent another email about The Walrus and The Carpenter, ignoring the whole thing. 

-

Two weeks after Leif’s breakup, he knocked on Tobin’s door at nine pm on the dot. When Tobin opened the door and saw Leif, eyes still red and puffy, he froze. 

“Could you… tell me one of your poems?”

Tobin wrapped his arm around Leif and tugged him into a hug, then said  _ love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, _ and then in his own words, “She was never going to be able to love you the way you deserve to be loved.”

Leif let out a sob, and Tobin hugged him tighter.  _ This above all; to thine own self be true, _ Tobin said, and then he was quiet, and let Leif cry. 

-

Later, much later, Leif sat down with Tobin on the couch and told him, “I think I’ve been in love with you for years,” and, “I was just too afraid to admit it, even to myself,” and, “I understand if you’ve moved on,” and, “you’ll always be the best friend I could ever ask for,” and, “Tobin, please  _ say _ something.”

Tobin thought about AP Highschool English,  _ if music be the food of love, play on, _ and about his book club and Calypso,  _ to be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love, _ and about Abigail,  _ do I dare disturb the universe?,  _ and about Shakespeare, who wrote a hundred sonnets because he never learned how to just  _ say _ what he  _ meant, _ and with a million lines of poetry running through his head, Tobin smiled and opened his mouth and just said, “I love you.”

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Referenced works in order;  
> Romeo and Juliet- William Shakespeare  
> I’m Not Okay (I Promise)- MCR  
> Sonnet 94- William Shakespeare  
> Twelfth Night- William Shakespeare  
> Hamlet- William Shakespeare  
> Julius Caesar- William Shakespeare  
> Sonnet 130- William Shakespeare  
> The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock- TS Eliot  
> Sonnet 29- William Shakespeare  
> Romeo and Juliet- William Shakespeare (again!)  
> Sonnet 147- William Shakespeare  
> Sonnet 142- William Shakespeare  
> Sonnet 61- William Shakespeare  
> Julius Caesar- William Shakespeare (again!)  
> Romeo and Juliet- William Shakespeare (again!!!)  
> Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen  
> Sonnet 139- William Shakespeare  
> The Walrus and The Carpenter- Lewis Carroll  
> Sonnet 116- William Shakespeare  
> Hamlet- William Shakespeare (again!)  
> Twelfth Night- William Shakespeare (again!!!)  
> Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen (again!)  
> The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock- TS Eliot (again!)
> 
> Yell at me about Shakespeare and zep on my tumblr @Rsbry-Beret and like always, ppl who comment are amazing and wonderful <3


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